Whens and Wildflowers

Ok, so in my last post, I mentioned how I was healing. And that’s true, but I really have no pattern to it. Last week was really great. This week so far… Oh boy. I have already had more mental breakdowns than I care to admit.

Life just feels so hard at the moment. And I am reminded of my good friend Jo from ‘Little Women’, who just like me struggled to balance her emotions of absolute anger, extraordinary love for those around her, and complete and utter loneliness. Plus, I can totally understand her desperate heartbreak of losing her ‘one beauty’ when she shaved off all her hair for a good cause. I feel ya sister, that 100% would’ve been my response too.

Like I’ve said before, just when I take one step forward, I seem to take another 10 backwards. I want to be better, I do. But I don’t know how. I really have no clue as to how to heal properly or what the healing process should look like for me. And if movies and books are anything to go by, I’m doing it completely wrong *my perfectionist nature is dying inside as I write those five words, so let’s not go by fictional pieces of work*.

Now bear with me, but there used to be an ad in the '80s for AIDS with a Grim Reaper (super creepy and grim *haha see what I did there*). Now, instead, in this wonderful modern age where too many people have too much time on their hands, someone has dubbed over a PSA for Covid as a joke. I suppose it’s one small way to make a light-hearted joke out of a life-sucking pain in the posterior.

You know, the grim reaper feels like it’s hanging around a bit too much. Only for me, it’s just here for my hopes and dreams. Ha. Ha.

Ok, but seriously, I am ‘grieving’. Not a person, but my life, and yes, my hopes and dreams. According to the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) used by many to scale where they are at in their journey (because of course that journey would be a perfectly straight line completely in order), I should be somewhere about… hmmm… I’m not sure. Because I think I probably go through all of those stages on a regular basis, in and out and roundabout at random. If I was the weather, I’d totally be setting up shop in Melbourne *all four seasons in one day!*

As I said earlier, life is too hard at the moment. I want my life to just be over and done with so I can be in Heaven with Jesus, yet I want to live my life - see if it is the ideal, hopeful looking future I imagine, one that is filled with good things and God-honouring purpose.

But I feel as if that ideal future will never come. I feel as though I’m grieving over something that I will never have, even though I don’t know that for certain yet. Because I already have had to grieve through different stages of my life in the past as they were not how I expected or wanted them to go.

Yes, I have had many great times in my life, I’m not discounting that. But I struggle with the fact that so much of what I remember in my life has been filled with pain and heartache. I have grieved over my anxious childhood that made school a nightmare for me instead of fun. I have grieved over my early high school experience, which was so bad to the point where I had my first real suicidal thoughts. I have grieved over having to share my parents and home with two children who weren’t my siblings but may as well have been as we fostered them for so long. I have grieved over people I loved and trusted abandoning or betraying me, coming and going in my life making it impossible to have the ‘best friend’ so many girls seem to have had their whole growing up lives. I am still grieving my uni experience which consisted of only one full year being in person due to covid instead of three or four. And I am grieving my life pre-covid and pre-ex-boyfriend because I feel as though my life is now on some unknown trajectory that has no happy ending in sight as a result of these two largely life-altering events.

In science, we are taught to look for trends and patterns to give an estimate of what the future of an experiment may yield. So my logic is telling me that these trends and patterns of my life are simply going to continue on their course. That doesn’t fill me with much excitement.

And I know that whilst we as Christians are told we can live life abundantly and to the fullest because of Jesus, we are also told that the Christian life is often filled with suffering and heartache and pain because sometimes this can be used to glorify God even more than the good things.

So, ok then God. What are you doing? How long? How long God must my life be filled with suffering? Until the day I die? Will I ever see or understand the purpose of my life, what I'm supposed to do with it? When will I see You glorified in it? Do others even see You glorified in it? When will I learn completely that You alone are enough, even though my heart aches in my humanness for love and affection and acceptance? When will I stop fighting for my life and just be able to take off the gloves and rest? When will my trauma stop haunting me and hanging over me with every decision I make? When will I get a good night’s sleep for heaven’s sake??

I have no idea how to answer these questions at the moment, and some of them will likely never be answered. As I pose these questions to God at the moment, I feel as though my prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling. I know God hears me, but He doesn’t promise immediate answers. And in case you didn’t know already, waiting is really difficult.

Just like I don’t really know how to heal, I don’t really know how to end this post. So I am going to attach a song that has made me cry many times, as I feel it is my heart song at the moment. I don’t know where I am or what I am doing, but I know that I must be a wildflower.

‘Wildflower’ by Sarah Kroger:

In the depths of my mind when I lie very still

I remember the wildflowers on the hill

And all that I want is to be in their midst

To be lifted from this long loneliness

Did You bring me here or did I lose my way?

Is there something that I can do or say

To go back to the fields, to the slow falling rain

To the breath of the wind, to the cool of the day?

Have You been in hiding or am I just blind?

Would I be in Eden if You opened my eyes?

How can I bloom when the rivers are dry?

Here in the wasteland, here in the wasteland

I dreamed I could fly, I didn't know where I'd go

But I'm leaving behind everything I know

And I find myself here where no rain ever falls

Maybe I am a wildflower after all

Yes, I am a wildflower after all

You own the whole earth but You give us the land

You leave us to blossom, You never demand

Maybe this heartbreak is only Your hands

Making a garden, You're making a garden

#honestlyimperfect #wildflower #grief #lifeishard #healinginheartbreak